Running Up that Hill
by bebe-jinx
Summary: ...Being in the present with family and friends, she felt like a stranger. A predator watching the lucky ones hoping to steal a piece of every ones life


Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: Written in 30 mins with Placebo's cover of the Kate Bush song "Running up that Hill" on repeat. Completely un-beta'd.

**Running Up that Hill**

The true problem was never how to kill Naraku.

The question was what would happen after the evil thing died. After the jewel had been put back together piece by piece. In the time between falling down a mystical well and completing a task that took five years, nothing had truly changed.

They were all five years older, a little bit quieter, and a lot more mature but they were still the same.

Kagome was 20 years old, yet she still felt 15. Frozen in place unable to move forward or backward, unable to live.

Being in the present with family and friends, she felt like a stranger. A predator watching the lucky ones hoping to steal a piece of every ones life to assemble something close to an imitation of the life they all led.

She wasn't in school. She wasn't really at home. Her job was more an obligation to not be a quitter. But for five years Kagome had been running; from friends, from death, from the truth that any ending to what she was in could never end with her smiling.

Kagome had stopped wondering what love was. It wasn't until she was 18 she realized that it, whatever _it_ was, was in her and _it_ was for him. To be honest, she hardly had a choice of men to fall for. A priest who saved everything he had for an untrusting warrior or a little boy that had left to forge his own life with people that looked like him. The only person left was Him.

Inuyasha wasn't so sullen, less temperamental and more reverent. But all of this couldn't change the fact he was only _part_ human. _Part _whole, _part_ there, only _part_ unnoticeable. Ears that wiggled when the wind swirled around them and hair so silver it was near white were hard to hide, even if the city was Tokyo.

At 19, six months after Naraku was killed, Kagome had realized that Inuyasha could never live in her time. He didn't belong and no matter how many times she told herself it didn't matter, in the end she wasn't really in control of what did and didn't count.

She would sometimes fantasize about what their life would be together in her time.

It always seemed to turn into something ugly. Them hiding from everyone whoever knew her. Him a constant threat to the outside because even after five years to smell her time always put him on edge. Her creating lie after lie because more than likely she would have to run home at least once a week because she just _knew_ something was wrong with him.

"It doesn't hurt me." He had said once when she had explained why living in her time just wouldn't work.

Kagome knew though, that it did. He understood that he was never whole that he was only _part_ of something. That even though she herself _accepted_ him; society, regardless of the time or the place, just wouldn't.

She had once hoped that her acceptance of him would be enough. But even her love couldn't stand against millions. He understood.

Kagome wished she believed him.

The month before her 20th birthday, four months before they completed the jewel, Kagome realized she couldn't stay in the past with Inuyasha. It wasn't her place. She couldn't say goodbye to her family and friends and almost everything she had ever known.

She wouldn't give it up.

For the past five years, she had only been able to steal snatches of something similar to a life. She wouldn't be complete in the past. She knew it because in the past she was always the strange one. Regardless of what she wore or how she spoke it was as if every stranger they met knew she was _different. _Normalcy wouldn't be in her life if she stayed.

The well had no reason to stay open after the jewel was complete. Her only reason for the past now was love.

How could that be enough?

People fell in and out love so much in one lifetime. How was their love any different? Why would it be stronger, why would it be more than enough to defeat magic?

Two months before the jewel was complete, Kagome found herself slipping. Not from Inuyasha or her friends in the past, but from the struggle of trying to live two lives. She felt herself running up some hill, trying to find her footing only really slipping farther down. Every move brought her closer to the end of them and every footstep felt heavier than the one before it.

A month after they completed the jewel, Kagome couldn't cross time.

She remembered the panic that seemed to choke her immediately. "Breathe," she had told herself as she knelt to the cold packed earth at the bottom of the well.

She had dirt in her nails for days after that. The earth felt dead, like it had never opened for her, like there had never been a sizzle of magic anywhere. She had clawed at the packed dirt, scrambling for a way in.

"Let me in. Please." Kagome squeaked, hoping someone would hear her grant her one last chance to see them.

"Kagome?"

The young woman looked up to her mother's face curious as to why her daughter was digging in dirt with her bare hands.

"Mama." Kagome gasped, sucking in sobs that were trying to escape. She knew this would happen. "It won't let me through. I can't see any of them." She choked out, shaking her head in dismay. "Mama I never got to say goodbye to any of them. Mama …Inuyasha." She breathed out before stopping her dig. And there she sat staring useless into the hole she made.

And as tiny worms and beetles seeped from her dirt hole, Kagome couldn't help but feel very sad. She should have realized this would happen two years ago.

Love wasn't enough to transcend time.


End file.
